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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



ICptt^^rs from MnxttniBr J^arb^j 
Sr. iamb §>tarr Savhun. 



Executive Department, 
State of California, 

Sacramento. 
2626 Sept. 5, 1904. 

Mr. Oscar T. Shuck, 

San Francisco, Cal. 
Dear Sir: 

I thank you for the copy of your verses, "The Helping 
Hills." Whether the major part of the credit therefor be due 
to you or to Starr Kino, the production is a very eloquent and 
dignified one. 

Very truly yours, 

GEO. 0. PARDEE. 



^Vhen His Excellency wrote this letter he had seen only the 
single poem which he names. 

At the same time Dr. David Starr Jordan, President of 
Leland Stanford, Junior, University, wrote to the author in 
like complimentary terms, using the words "Your dignified version 
(»i the lectures of Thomas Starr King." 

Dr. Jordan had read the first four poems. 



in l&tVBt 



By 

Author of "All is Well' 
and oxher poems 



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JUBRARYof CONGi^ESS 
Two Copies rteceiveU 

MAY 9 iy05 

Copyneni entry 

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COPY 8. 



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COPYRIGHT, 1905. 

By OSCAR T. SHUCK. 






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Inscription 



Mrs. iJ^avntt iautfi, (inlg Sauglit^r, 

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31 ask JprrmtsBtnn tn 3lnHrnbr 
Jlmmortal Pag^s. 



Introduction, 



Jt was not difficult to bring Mr. King out in this new dress. 
In addition to a logical and strenuous mind, be possessed an 
intensely poetic nature, and his lectures and sermons tremble with 
poetic feeling, and are clothed in poetic phrases. It is his spirit 
that vivifies the poems in this volume; and in paraphrasing his 
language I have employed his words, except in instances Avhere 
the exigencies of rhyme enforced departure. 

''Time, the beautifier of the dead,*' is keeping his memory 
green, but, for the benefit of men and the glory of God, may 
he now come into a revived and broader fame. 

O. T. S. 



Notice of Mr. King. 



Thomas Starr King, the ruling intellect in California story, 
was a Boston and San Francisco divine of Universalist-Unitarian 
belief. He was born in New York City on December 17, 1824. 
He became head of the family at the age of fifteen, on the death 
of his father, who was also a clergyman of the same faith. 

From the first he had no vice, and gave himself up to the 
acquisition of knowledge. Says Edwin P. Whipple, in a memoir, 
*'His mind quivered with a new delight as he felt the freshening 
breeze of Channing's religious genius stir the deeps of his soul. 
Afterwards he mastered the results of the great German and 
French critics of the Bible. To many of our present young stu- 
dents exegesis practically means exit Jesus; but King, in all his 
eager quest of truth, and dutiful acknowledgement of the service 
w^hich the great German theologians had rendered to the rational 
interpretation of the Scriptures, never lost his original hold on 
Christ Jesus as the express image of God, as the Son who reveals 
to us the Father, as the ideal embodiment of a perfected Hu- 
manity. ' ' 

Mr. King began his ministry at Woburn, Mass., in the autumn 
of 1845, w^ien he was not quite twenty-one. Before he had 
reached twenty-two, he became pastor of a flourishing church in 
Charlestown, Mass., succeeding the great orator and preacher, 
Edwin H. Chapin. 

In November, 1848, he assumed the pastorate of the Hollis- 
Street Church, in Boston. On his birthday in the next month, 
he married Miss Julia Wiggin, of East Boston. 

After eleven years' service in Boston, Mr. King accepted 
a call from the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco. He 
arrivecl in this city on Saturday, April 28, 1860, and preached 
his first sermon on the next morning. Mr. Whipple said of him, 
in a Boston journal at that time: "Rapid as had been the growth 
of his genius as a fervid and brilliant preacher, it has been fully 
matched by a growth as rapid in his attainments as a theologian; 



and his rhetoric, opulent as it was in all those picturesque images 
and vivid phrases which seize upon the fancy was none the less 
the guarded expression of a large, clear, full, and well-disciplined 
mind. Excellent as were his powers of acquisition, of thought, 
and of speech, there was still something more excellent in the 
genial, loving, cheerful spirit from which his powers derived their 
best life, drew their richest inspiration, and received their noblest 
impulse. ' ' 

After a noble and fruitful ministry of four years in San 
Francisco, Mr, King died on the 4th of March, 1864. 

He died a reposeful and triumphant death, at his home. Only 
a few minutes before he passed on, he recited the 23rd Psalm 
("The Lord is My Shepherd"). Then, in the vestibule of glory, 
he said: ''Do not weep for mej I wish you knew my feelings; 
I feel all the privileges and greatness of the future; already it 
looks grand, beautiful; I am passing away fast; my feelings are 
strange. ' ' 

It really seemed that the author of all being had called this 
clean spirit to higher ''privileges" in his fortieth year. 

Mr. King's widow, as beautiful as Mr. King was intellectual, 
became the wife of Mr. William Norris, Secretary of the Spring 
Valley Water Company. He died a few years ago, leaving to her 
very great riches in her second widowhood. Mrs. King herself 
passed away, in the fullness of years, in 1904. 

The children of Mr. and Mrs. King are a daughter and son. 
The first is most happily married to Hon. Horace Davis, the 
prosperous business man and scholar. President of the Sperry 
Flour Company, who has been President of the University 
of California, and who also represented San Francisco in Con- 
gress for two terms, 1877-1881. The son, Fi-ederic R. King, was 
in full practice as a lawyer in San Francisco for seven or eight 
years, leaving the profession in 1895 to enter commercial life, 
and becoming president of a lumber company. 

On April 11, 1860, the day before he sailed from New York 



City to settle in San Francisco, Mr. King Avas given a '' Unitarian 
Breakfast Eeception" at the Fifth-Avenue Hotel. There were 300 
guests seated at the tables, and the poet, William Cullen 
Bryant, presided. 

Eev. Dr. F. H. Hedge, unable to be present, wrote a letter in these 
words : * ' King is with you for a parting word, and your fraternal 
benediction on his way. Happy soul! himself a benediction wher- 
ever he goes, benignly dispensing the graces of his life wherever 
he carries the wisdom of his word. ' ' 

For myself— I am thankful for great riches; I have come into 
a vast estate. This meek and mighty shepherd has lifted me out 
of the fog and whirlwind of a great city and led me along 
delectable paths, ' ' beside still waters. ' ' He has let me walk with 
him over Elysian Fields, bearing himself so kingly, so knowingly, 
holding my hand in his, and discoursing of the eternal verities. 

There is a passage in the Hebrew scriptures which I have never 
seen discussed : ' ' Thy thoiights shall be established. ' ' No vain 
thought has ever been '^established". If ever thought of man 
has been established, so have been the thoughts of Thomas Starr 
King. And, as Emerson has said of Taylor, the Shakespeare of 
divines, his words are music in my ear. 

O. T. S. 



_:s3^ 



pOPttlS 



PAGE 

I — Keeping the Heart 19 

II— The Ideal Life 27 

III — The Harmonies of Nature 35 

IV— The Helping Hills 43 

V — A Kingdom in the Air. 51 

VI — Deliverance From the Fear of Death 91 

VII— Yosemite 99 

VIII— Existence and Life 63 

IX — Substance and Show 73 

X— Sight and Insight 1C9 



Keeping the Heart. 



IKffptng tl|f Impart 



Written after a study of Thomas Starr King's Lecture on 
The Heart, and tlie Issues of Life," delivered in 1857. 



Keep your heart, brother : You must grow. 
This is the law — be wise and know. 

We are so bound that all our art and power 

Cannot create a pebble or a flower; 

Of our own selves we cannot even live, 

Yet does our quality its color give 

To all that we receive; we re-create 

The world in our own likeness, and so decide our fate ; 

The life that flows from God so constant well, 

We may pervert into the life of hell. 

Persons are points, in all their many states, 
From which the boundless universe radiates ; 
There is a light in each which outward streams. 
And meets and mixes with all other beams; 
Our inmost state is felt so close, so far. 
By nearest grass-blade and remotest star; 
It touches every object that we see. 
And every fact that has been or shall be. 



KEEPING THE HEART, 



External nature has the same for all ; 

On all alike her varied colors fall; 

The sun and stars, and all there is of light, 

The earth, the air, the landscapes, and the night, 

Enfold us all, and the same background place 

Before the wondering eyes of all the race; 

But impulses and aptitudes that lie 

Deep in our being's core, diversify 

The world as wide as if we dwelt afar. 

Distributed each upon a different star. 

Some men look everywhere with penetrant eyes, 
And use the world to think in and grow wise; 
Nothing eludes their intellectual might. 
They analyze the air, untwist the light, 
Take up the carpets of the globe and bore 
With countless drills into the spacious floor; 
They weigh the planets, and, audacious, place 
Their measuring-lines across the deeps of space; 
Their central passion is a thirst to know; 
The universe is a school, in which they grow. 



Another is labor's slave; he tugs his best; 
And night, true to its purpose, gives him rest. 
Their booths in camps and gorges others pitch, 
And use the world to trade in, and grow rich. 



KEEPING THE HEx\JlT. 23 

Some find a pleasure-ground for giddy joy; 
Others a scene their passions to employ. 
Others, again, a garden in the sky 
In which the stars are blossoms to the eye; 
Blooms wanted more for their poetic light 
Than for their worth in the astronomer's sight; 
Air richer for the hues which it presents 
Than for its uses and their consequence; 
The mountains grander for their misty dress. 
Their green and snow and shadowy loveliness, 
Than for their influence to the climates driven 
Or their house-keeping to the nations given. 

Some people seem to carry extra sheaves 

Of sunbeams in their bosom; carols of birds; 

Sweet tints of nature's green; and odorous leaves; 

Booklets of melody, and kindest words; 

All these they shed as freely in the air. 

And sprinkle over nature everywhere. 

Who bears a music-box within his heart. 

With it the sun's great pulse will seem to beat; 

And, too, the trees, and flowers in gladness start, 

And pour their voices, too, in music sweet. 

At times our temperaments and aptitudes, 
The strong and sudden stirrings of our moods, 
Seem to assail our quality and tone. 
And take the captive heart to be their own; 



24 KEEPING THE HEART, 

But soon they sail away like clouds — their power 
Is the swift blackness only of a shower. 
Our moral states stay with us while they change; 
They lead the spirit over wider range; 
They wrap our being closer, and have more 
That touches destiny. They either soar 
Through fogs with us to altitudes of light, 
Or pall their wings o'erhead like veils of night. 

Each nature has some passion to deplore 

That strives to gnaw its way into the core 

Of character, to be seated there for ill. 

No sin in this; but rise in strength of will, 

A human will, and fight the thing of hate. 

Or your responsibility and sin are great. 

Courage, O brother! when the pulse beats fast — 

Fight with it, or become possessed by it at last ! 

Keep the heart safe from Envy — sour-faced thing 

That sickens at the carol others sing. 

Pity and dread ! that heart that now beats warm 

May be corroded by such selfish form; 

Infected through, so that it cannot feel 

A generous pleasure in another's weal; 

Evil must smoulder in its blood 

When others are buoyed on fortune's flood; 

The pain and joy that others gain 

In its own fibres waken pain; 



KEEPING THE HEART, 



Its sensibility burnt so long, 

It thinks itself has suffered some great wrong! 

When Avarice has control, jaundice has dyed 
The whole of life. The starry heavens hide 
Their glory; the liberal earth and sea 
Have for the shrivelled heart no sympathy. 

The vice of License plays a tragic part. 
Contaminates the life-blood of the heart; 
Intemperate pleasure is the innermost woe 
Of all that poisoned natures ever know. 

Keep your heart, brother: have a resolute mind 
To hold the safety-paths that all may find; 
Life flows to you from purity supreme — 
Nourish no passion that will taint the stream. 

Back of all sins is Sin! Our central foe; 
Armed always for the spirit's overthrow: 
Grapple it; unlaxing; in a holy strife; 
And God will drive that, also, from your life. 

Keep your heart, brother: see — and think — and do, 
From your own inward monitor's point of view : 
Then shall God's purpose in you be complete. 
And all life's arteries ripple pure and sweet. 



The Ideal Life. 



(UI^p aiifal IGtfp 



Written after a study of Thomas Starr King's Lecture en- 
titled "Living for Ideas and Principles," delivered in 1856. 

Things are accounted noble just as they 
Ideas and principles to the mind convey. 
A grain of sand by gravitation held, 
Is just as truly by the law impelled 
As any mighty object, far or near; 
And illustrates the principle as clear; 
Faithful in this as all the stars that race 
Forever on In firmamental space. 

A chunk of common quartz does not imply 
A market value to the naturalist's eye; 
But, tell him that by slicing it in two, 
Some plays of nature will reward his view — 
The force of crystallization will unfold — 
And he will hold it as a lump of gold. 

A loadstone is but ordinary ore 
To the philosopher, and remains no more 
Until you hint its real, living robe — 
Magnetic qualities that charge the globe. 



30 THE IDEAL LIFE. 

All valueless In Itself, a piece of glass, 

Triangular, a multitude might pass; 

Yet treasure to the student when he finds 

The miracles It works, the colors It untwines; 

That with It he can paint his walls all ralnbow-brlght, 

And loose the tints that braid Into a beam of light. 

Learns the philosopher, at last, to stand 
Reverent, before such riches at his hand. 
Things we believe have nothing to convey. 
He truly sees, and knows, and owns their sway; 
He sees that nothing In the universe 
But has Its proper story to rehearse ; 
Some principle In nature,' certain, kind. 
Whispering to the reverent student-mind ; 
Sometimes a fossil or a pebble Is the clew 
To geologic systems founded firm and true. 

If be, material forms have worth, we find, 

By reason of the principles enshrined, 

The full appreciation of a man must be 

Just as Imperative, impartial, free. 

What spiritual principle is apparent, clear? 

What are the thoughts and things he holds most dear? 

His life — what was the old, what Is the new? 

What is the vital truth that threads him through ? 



THE IDEAL LIVE. 3] 

What does he stand for? 'TIs this question probes 

His real value underneath his robes; 

'T is this will show how faithful he has been 

To every happy privilege of men; 

How much his fellowship has been with God; 

Where have his feet at times in secret trod? 

Seek not to know his fortune or his birth, 

As though in this you might attest his worth, 

But feel the moral frame of his career, 

What purposes he lives for, now and here ; 

Go, knock upon the substance of his soul, 

And note the central sentiments that control — 

Does he ring hollow? Or does the musical shout 

Of some eternal principle ring out? 

Some principle, mean or noble, holds us here. 
And gives our estimate in the spiritual sphere. 
Sometimes we meet a brother, clean and wise. 
Obedient not only, but personifies 
A principle — walks kingly among men: 
Truth ever is unfolding in his ken; 
Honor is so ingrained — word good as bond — 
To every pledge such characters respond. 
His dealing with a man In open trade 
Is virtually a sacrament — so is he made. 
Blood is the current of his physical frame, 
But no more than God's spirit is aflame 



32 THE IDEAL LIFE. 

In all his being, its passion ever fresh — 
Truth, honor, charity, Intrenched in flesh. 

Not principles abstract, defended by the mind. 
Published by paper, and with logic twined. 
But principles Incarnate, looking through 
Eyes human, speaking human, too; 
Moving in homes and trading In the stores. 
And where the fiercer mart of commerce roars; 
Eloquent in caucus and In senate-rooms 
As by the lake or 'mid the garden-blooms; 
Principles which all beneficence enfold. 
Signing subscription-papers and scattering gold. 

A man who holds no principles like these, 

A man the Spirit does not touch to seize 

Eternal things, is living In eclipse 

Without their cheer upon his heart and lips; 

He stands for nothing and has nothing got 

In separate right; angels bewail his lot. 

What will he do when sometime forced to face 

The deeper problems that confront the race ! 

Principles not only prompt us what to do. 

But pour their peace Into our bosom, too; 

Adversity? Be our Ideals true. 

They will array themselves and bear us through; 



THE IDEAL LIFE. 33 

In terrible moments, when our darlings die, 
There are great principles will tell us why. 

Over us is a boundless, sparkling sky. 
But deeper heaven, diviner promise lie 
For all who will a principle acclaim. 
And make obedience their moral aim. 

Thin are the walls that in partition rise 
Between the spirit-world and that before our eyes; 
We may look through their alabaster veils, above. 
Where God is shrouded in the glory of his love. 



The Harmonies of Nature. 



©l|p ||armatttP0 at Nature 



Written after reading Thomas Starr King's lecture, entitled 
''Living Water From Lake Tahoe'\ deliv:red in 1863. 



Emerald and blue, set In such lofty place! 
There 's not a soul on earth so pure, through grace. 
A heart that lets no evil linger near, 
A heart whose agitation is so clear, 
A heart whose joy is ever so unstained, 
Would be a heart that had perfection gained. 
It would be fit for heaven; nay, It might well 
Repose in heaven wherever it should dwell. 

All round this mountain goblet glories shine. 
The pomp of garniture from hand divine; 
Landscapes that fascinate, high lights that glow. 
The sunset radiance on mountain snow; 
The lordly pines, no jungles at their feet, 
Throwing aroma, all, so far, so sweet; 
The towering peaks, on which the tired mind rests 
The sternness of eternal crags and crests; 
From all whose lifted tops the singing breeze 
Calls to the far-off stretches of the seas! 



38 THE PIAKAIOTn'IES 01 NATURE. 

Of all its multiple dowers that charm and bless, 
Its color Is its sovereign lovehness. 
A mile of richest green rings round the shore; 
Then tenderest blue shades its wide bosom o'er. 
The colors do not blend, but separate flow, — 
Due to their different, awful depths below; 
A floor of lapis lazuli so vast, 
Within a ring of flaming emerald cast; 
Or clear-defined as are the walls of gem 
That beautify the New Jerusalem. 

Pure color in all nature, studied true. 
Brings the all-loving Father Into view. 
The color of the world is all a part 
Of the world's gospel; and the reverent heart 
Swells at the utterance of truth and grace 
Flashed in such glory from the Father's face. 

Color is wed to purity. About our lake are seen 
Only the bright and spotless, and the clean. 
Stones that are almost precious on the beach. 
And granite sands along its lengthened reach. 
Dip from its white-edged ripples or Its heart 
Or from the foam that breaks above the blue, 
You dip what would befit baptismal part, 
You dip the pure and true. 



THE HAR?,TO]aES OF NATURE. 39 



The purity of nature Is a part 
Of what to man Is given 
To know the sanctity of God, 
The certaint/ of heaven. 



The flowers of nature do not robe the globe 
In splendor like the rocks and snows 
That dress uncultivated hills. 

God shows his tenderness through awful things; 

Fact both In science and theology — 

Seest thou 't Is true? 

What savage chasm must the lake-bed be! 

Empty the water from that measureless bowl, 
And desolation unrelieved would spread. 
If God were only the Almighty God, 
If It should please him to Impress us most 
With his Infinitude, and make us bow with dread, 
Omnipotence could make the mountains breathe 
Such fear that men would turn and fly, 
And landscapes frown monotony and gloom. 



The utmost desolation that we know 
Sends out the sweetest influences that flow 



40 THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 

In nature. Turn ye to the moon's full light — 
How soothing, kind, beneficent, and bright! 
So patient and so pitiful, she seems; 
Mysterious calm drops from her silver beams. 
But blasted Is that orb that gleams so fair, 
Sahara Is a garden In compare. 



If, as some say, religion Is alloy. 

All hostile to the natural good and joy 

For which the heart of man sends up Its cry; 

And doubt the burden of Its prophecy; 

/ would not think that earth, and sea and sky. 

Would all be tinted to enchant the eye; 

/ would not think that storms would break away 

In rainbows, and the sunset clouds display 

The sensuous splendors of their airy sphere; 

And oceans with their voices ever near. 

And mountains which the azure mists enrobe. 

Crown and complete the beauty of the globe ! 

I like the Quaker's simpleness and calm; 

His work and worship have their soothing balm 

But nature never Is In russet clad; 

Her robe Is beauteous and her heart Is glad; 



THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 41 



J he flowers that bloom eternal are not gray 
On forest-harps the winds forever play. 



I bow to Calvin's character so strong; 
His life and service to the race belong; 
Great educator, well ordained to bless 
By rugged statement of God's holiness; 
But nature's colors never are his own; 
Her landscapes never take his sombre tone. 

What zeal, what sacred Intuitions move 
Within the girdled friar's heart of love! 
How many holy triumphs she has won 
Who wears the simple bonnet of the nun ! 
But buoyant nature will assent to wear 
Monastic drapery only here and there; 
The harmonies of natural beauty roll 
Far up into the chords that thrill the soul. 



The universe is the happy home of God; 
Over its gem-laid floor his feet have trod; 
Beauty lines all Its walls, draped by his hand 
Created charms, all for his pleasure stand. 
The spirit calls thee to commune with him; 
Let not the ear be dull, the eye be dim; 



42 THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 

All that thou seest lies In Love's embrace; 
Love holds the sumless worlds that play in space, 
Sprinkles the brilliance of the lakes and seas, 
And binds them into mighty harmonies; 
Assigns each natural force its part to fill, 
And sees them all obey the central will. 



The Helping Hills. 



®I|p Ifflpmg IlillB 



Written after reading "Lessons from the Sierra Nevada' 
one of Thomas Starr King's lectures, delivered in 1863. 

Always such things as mountain thoughts there are, 
And mountain principles that lift afar. 
Marshes and mists provoke our stress and strife, 
When upland chains might run through every life. 
The Master on the mount in silent prayer — 
Girt with illimitable vision there — 
More truly knelt upon a mount within. 
So far from where his holy feet had been. 

To every nature higher wisdom calls; 

At times, the hush of heavenly music falls; 

Caught from no latitude where passions come. 

But where each willing mind may pitch its home. 

We do not keep the company we may. 

But from our own best moods we turn away; 

With our sage monitors we disagree. 

Cleave to our fetters and reject the free. 

Bold ridges rise within our conscious bound; 
The heights of moral truth are all around; 



46 THE HELPING HILLS. 

But we disclaim to reach their happy goal 

And stand within the scenery of the soul. 

We do not seek their slopes (so passing strange!) 

Or lift our vision to their noble range. 

We burrow In the glen, or stroll the moor, 

And murmur that life's prospect Is so poor. 

Genius approaches close to all our kind; 
Touches the stolid and Invites the blind. 
Its essence Is for few, but the loud call 
To banquet on Its knowledge Is for all. 
Raised from the flats of life to Dickens' ground 
How much of love and sympathy Is found! 
On all our nature's ways, Into each nook, 
And out upon Its motley plains we look. 

History's far-reaching vista ! How we dwell 
On every classic page that caught It well ! 
What light and lift to ordinary lot 
The Intellect and learning of a Scott! 
On Newton and on Herschel what depends, 
*' Far as creation's ample range extends" ! 
Whose penetrant and all-prophetic eyes 
Beheld the differing glories of the skies ! * 

(* One star differetli from another star in glory. St. Paul.) 



THE HELPING HILLS. 47 

Humboldt and Agassiz ! What wealth we find — 
Dug from the earth, — stored in the human mind I 
Stands out so vast — thanks to their searching probe— 
The grandeur of the science of the globe. 
The plane of Shakespeare ! What resources lie 
Reserved for ardent souls that press so highl 

All the rich books, historian, artist, sage, 

Thinkers supreme of every land and age, 

Pure and beneficent as highland breeze. 

What thrilling contact comes from such as these! 

Their vast capacity invites us up. 

To drink of Learning's overflowing cup. 

No noble prospects spread before the eye 
Until we pitch the tent both firm and high. 
Our spiritual being holds a vast estate. 
With peaks of vision for the low and great. 
Imperial Socrates ! He lived high up. 
And, when he turned not from the fatal cup, 
He mounted higher, and surveyed our life — 
World of ideal and material strife. 
Eternity and time approved him there, 
On the lone summit with its keen pure air. 

Paul lived high up, and walked by sight so true, 
In altitudes that touched the heavenly blue. 



48 THE HELPING HILLS. 

One^ unapproachable in vaster light, 
Poured his rich unction from sublimer height; 
Ancient as being, ever green in youth, 
He saw the landscape of eternal truth. 

We are to live within the world ; so true ; 

And feel its passions which we may subdue. 

Work in its interests, and keep full aim 

To be responsive unto Duty's claim. 

Yet stretches of our life and thought should lie 

As if upheld by the wide-arching sky. 

Or on Sierra slopes, where the hot play 

Of worldly forces has no lot or stay. 

Believe, O Soul, that God has formed thee free, 
Of his own spirit, no mean force to be. 
The whisperings that visit every heart. 
Stand still and hear! Behold and note the part 
Mysterious powers enact. They are divine. 
To catch some gleams at times is surely thine. 
Faith, Hope and Charity, these three abide. 
They stand in blended glory at thy side; 
Would swiftly lift thee out of chains and clogs 
To the safe mountain-peaks that jut through fogs 
To slopes far off in the horizon's light — 
Believe in them, hold to them with thy might; 



THE HELPING HILLS. 49 

Ascend with them and breathe the upper air, 
Stand In the Everlasting Presence there. 

Our feet may be supported, now and then, 
Above our natural level. It Is when 
We look up to the hills. They are not dumb, 
Nor Impotent; from thence our help will come. 
New views, mysterious beauty, grander lights, 
Break on the spirit from those emerald heights; 
Translated from the rugged roads we trod, 
We walk with mighty men who walked with God. 



A Kingdom in the Air. 



A 2Ctngtinm in t\}t Atr 



Written after reflecting upon Thomas Starr King's Lecture on 
'Music", delivered in 1S58. 



Two prominent channels lead to outward scenes 
And give communion with all natural means: 
While eye Is Introducing to the mind, 
The ear the highway to the heart shall find. 

Blindness whets other sense, makes them atone 

In some degree for the fine sense that's gone. 

Pathology tells us that the total blind 

Become In character more spiritual and refined. 

In total deafness, though, the nature dries. 

It will no sister senses energize; 

It hardens, so experiments declare — 

Rather than strengthens them, tends to Impair. 

(Not always so; sweetness, nobility. 

Defeat Impediments of Infirmity.) 

In tendencies that thus these organs bind 
Some strlnking testimony we shall find. 
In education we can spare the eye 
Better than have the ear grow dull and dry. 



54 A KINGDOM IN THE AIR. 

Color and light In Infinite charm unroll, 
But sound has Influence closer to the soul. 
As gate to Intellect, eye Is the sense; 
The ear Is avenue to the sentiments ; 
A heaven, all destitute of light, could be; 
Not without love and praise, and song's sweet mys- 
tery. 
The cherubim may have the keener eyes. 
The seraphim enjoy the higher prize. 



Music Is not a copy, nor a thing; 

It is a pure creation. What we call 

The music of nature, does not tune or ring 

Like organized sounds; no choruses fall 

From nature; no hymns, no symphonies; 

It is thrown out unwrought In massy forms; 

The voice of cataracts, the melodies 

Of voluble birds, the sweep of storms. 

The play of winds and leaves In the wlldnerness;- 

All these hiut harmonies, but do not express. 

Perhaps there is a music of the spheres: 
We may Imagine it, we nothing hear. 
What will the spirit think that ever hears 
Our own globe's music flowing rich and clear? 



A KINGDOM IN THE AIR. 55 

If some hlind spirit could be fixed in space 
While earth rolled by him with its song borne on, 
What would the thought be, in that far-off place. 
When the vast-pulsing unison was gone : 
Warble of happy birds, the stir of bees, 
The sweeping of the winds in every zone. 
The sheets of sound compelling every breeze. 
And the else-starry skies In storm-clouds thrown ! 

The moan and motion of great forest trees; 

Low, lisping penitence of peaceful seas; 

The thunderous mellow bass of ocean stirred. 

Billowing so high, In clouds and mountains heard, 

And the momentum of Its mighty shock 

Upon a thousand leagues of stubborn rock: 

The spirit might Imagine, llst'ning nigh, 

It was a mighty o'fcjan rolling by, 

Touched on each key, alive on stop and rod. 

And roused by every pedal to the praise of God. 

The deep sea's elocution to the shore. 

How mellow ! And how purged of all things coarse 

The thunder of Its sweUIng evermore. 

The serried roll of Its tumultuous force ! 

And on the beach how gently lisp the ripples In 

their prance. 
Like little white mice nibbling at the sand as they 

advance. 



56 A KINGDOM IN THE AIR. 

(No wonder that Demosthenes spent such time 
In elocutionary practice on the shore, 
"Filling his mouth," as Mrs. Partington said sublime, 
"With paving stone, that he might be an oratorio." 
Trying, he possibly was, to catch 
Secrets of volume and tenderness In sound; 
History, in this, does not disclose his match; 
Through coming time he will be matchless found.) 

The melancholy crescendo of a blast, 
Piercing a brotherhood of pines In balm. 
With what gradations artful-fine at last. 
It sighs away its violent life in calm! 
Hark, in the summer, to the dactyls sweet 
Of Canada-whistler or the Peabody-bird 
In mountain valleys where they're won't to meet 
And where their notes are fullest, loudest heard; 
Feel the surprise of that soprano high, 
Mark how it slides and tapers Into pause, 
Like polished sting of bee swift winging by. 
In which even microscope can find no raggedness or 
flaws. 

Nature instructs us best in management of sound; 
Before her purity of tone we reverent stand; — 
All-clear like that with which the clouds are wound; 
Transparency of air, the sea-foam on the sand; 



A KINGDOM IN THE AIR. 57 

And Sparkle of rivers: all confess 
God's everlasting purity and holiness. 

That nature's music is a pure creation 

Appears, because there is no combination 

Of sentiment, Idea, emotion, in all sound; 

Man is the organ the Infinite has found 

To add this fullness of creative force 

To Beauty's treasury and to Life's resource. 

When, through the waves of sound, some mighty 

thought. 
Or sentiment, by human genius caught. 
Full-operates the mind and heart to win. 
Then true sublimities of sound begin. 

Greater than Shakespeare was Mozart 

In subtlety of genius and in art. 

I do not know how Lear or Hamlet swelled 

On the great dramatist's vision till compelled 

To fashion forth, under his artful tact. 

In rhythmic symmetry and stately fact; 

But hardly could the processes have been 

So supernatural, mystical, akin 

To the Divine calling of the world from naught, 

As the grand opera-passages that Mozart wrought. 

They did not come In thin, melodious stream; 
He did not amplify them from a theme; 



58 A KINGDOM IN THE AIR. 

He did not range them by his instruments, 
Composing them in harmony to the sense; — 
They burst full-voiced from a celestial choir, 
Or from an orchestra ideal, nigher. 
Into his mind — thence copied in a score, 
To haunt the soul of man forevermore. 

It was as if the whole act of "King John," 

With all its characters and movement on; 

The words and rhythm, the stirring passions, woke 

Like flash, into the poet's mind had broke; 

All things at hand for acting ready, ripe; 

Conditioned to be clothed in lasting type; — 

To stay forever in the uppermost range 

Of intellectual creations, vast and strange. 

From instances like this, which the musical sphere 
More furnishes than other tract of art, 
We catch deep hintings, ever fleet but clear. 
The footfalls of the Infinite mind and heart. 
Sustained by those, nature keeps orderly place, 
A starry anthem in the fane of space. 

The miracle of genius is all fathomless. 
Beethoven's passages in their stateliness, 
Were sudden in his subtle thought comprised 
At time his earthly ear was paralyzed. 



A' KINGDOM IN THE AIR. 59 

'Twas In this state, from Impulses that stole 
On the still active ear of his great soul, 
Upheld on steady spiritual wings, that he 
Wrought out the architecture of harmony. 

'Tis Handel leads us to the best of states; 

The highest music on Religion waits; 

In art, one's fortune Is to hear "Messiah" — 

The soul, In earthly clogs, can soar no higher. 

His nature kne^v the deepest sentiment 

Of Christendom, and was full competent 

To shrine It In the structure of his art : 

In harmonies that held the mind and heart. 

'Tis rare to hear a passage from Mendelssohn 
That seems to beauteous fulness to have grown; 
It seems to have been plucked a little hard, 
And scarcely ripe. Its state will warn and ward 
The seeker. But Mozart! His wealthy mind 
Shook off full melodies, their juices well combined, 
Blooming as peaches, mellow, luscious, sweet; 
In richness, for an angel's palate meet. 

Sublimity held Handel: for he saw 

The varied play of nature's perfect law. 

And that solemnity of holiness 

Was veined with a perennial tenderness — 



60 A KINGDOM IN THE AIR. 

As if the Book of Ruth, delightful yet, 
Were in the substance of the pentateuch set. 

Beethoven's genius rises to the mind. 
Wayward and wild and sea-like, unconfined; 
Heaving from troughs that lie in sullen night. 
Bold crests of melody that flash in light. 

The florid Donizetti, in rhetorical flow. 

Whose notes abated just a decade ago; 

The sparkling Auber, too; the honey-sweet Bellini; 

Weber so weird ; and, luscious all, Rossini ; 

Schubert, whose genius heavenly powers employ; 

Haydn of sunny temper, full of joy: — 

Attend such symphonies. Imparted there 

A quality distinguishes each chorus, air. 

Because the master's inmost state is lord 
Of every note and cadence, every chord, 
Although its kingdom is that of the air. 
Substantial, music is, we must declare. 

Of music's spirit, all we cultivate, 
In its devout expressions opened here, 
Will go as preparation for our state. 
When every mystery shall develop clear. 



A KINGDOM IN THE AIR. 61 

We'll not speak German In that world afar, 

No dialects will worship In Its fanes, 

But / believe Authority will not bar 

Beethoven's "Andantes" from celestial strains; 

We will slough off, no doubt, our English tongue 

When our mortality shall sink In calm, 

But when the gathering of the redeemed have sung 

Consummately, the "Anthem to the Lamb," 

One stroph may be — pulsed with seraphic fire — 

The "Hallelujah Chorus" of "Messiah." 



Existence and Life. 



i^xmtma anh ICtf? 



Written in review of Mr. King's Lecture ^dth this Title. 



Have you reflected that the frame of man 

All nature represents? — the singular fact 

That since the globe Its journey of light began, — 

Laden with life, completed and compact, — 

Even the proportions of the land and sea 

In human corporallty agree ! 

For science sees us, with its certain eye, 

Three-fourths as liquid, and one-fourth as dry. 

Bones of the hum'^^n framework all proclaim 
The globe's stout ligaments and rocky frame; 
The soil is softer tissue, flesh and skin; 
The teeth, the gleaming minerals within; 
The hair the vegetable life contains; 
The river systems, arteries and veins; 
The nerves, galvanic and magnetic flow ; 
The food takes of the grandest things we know : 
From air, lake, ocean, land and forest rolled; 
Even from the tropic heats and polar cold. 

The truth is pictured here, that life should be 
Nature in thought and feeling copied free. 



66 EXISTENCE AND LIFE. 

All people are not equally alive. 
All equally exist, but life is higher, 
7 he putting forth of faculties to thrive, 
Bringing all elements of nature nigher 
By free communion. So we truly live. 
Taking the nutriment all objects give. 

Hold in your hand some seeds. You cannot say. 
As you look at them, though they have one size, 
The quantity of life which they convey — 
Their latent powers are not before your eyes. 
Drop them in ground, and then their life begins; 
Each pellet shoots Its secret forces high. 
Each delicate thread an artful foothold wins. 
And climbs to feed on clouds and sun and sky. 
But If one be a seed of stately elm. 
Another of fragile herb, the life they gain 
From the same nourishment, in the same realm. 
Will be as their capacity to attain — 
Vastly unequal, as one drawls the more 
From nature's Infinity and vital store. 
So, any hundred babes are human germs 
That equally "exist". The life ahead 
Will not so much be measured by their terms 
Of years, as by their faculties instead. 

If one would in his heart and thought rehearse 
The wealth and bounty of the universe. 



EXISTENCE AND LIFE. 67 

He would give praise that lungs are nurtured free, — 

And, if they numbered myriads more, 'twould be. 

It costs no more than air or rain to pour 

Into the nerves a full electric store; 

The light would answer for as many eyes 

As the globe's spacious surface could comprise ; 

Beauty enough, and truth, of each, to charm 

As many minds as nature e'er could arm; 

Mystery and inspiration for all souls 

That could be gathered in her ample folds. 

But the digestive system of the man 
Is left to human skill and social plan; 
And these lack wisdom to space work and soil 
As to ensure such proper meed to toil, 
That labor may its own good harvest reap. 
And food be always plenteous and cheap. 
Whether the land does not belong to all — 
To man, not men — just like the common air, 
As a deep problem, must continual call 
To the true thought of statesman and of seer; 
Whether a system of property in the soil. 
Which keeps so many from a livelihood. 
While others get mere living for their toil. 
Has not a larger bane in it than good. 



68 EXISTENCE AND LIFE. 

We should be zealous to forecast the fruits 
Of novel schemes that touch the mass and state; 
In startling theories, their intellectual roots 
We should with patient spirit penetrate. 



If 'tis a question open to debate 

Whether the land is not an element 

As air and heat and light in every state, 

We must expect to see, oft and well-meant, 

Schemes social spring, till some great mind and will 

Are found, our labor to distribute with perfect skill; 

The products of the globe so multiply 

That food shall be wherever man has place. 

And want no longer be the bitter cry 

Of even the lowest member of the race. 



Distinctive human life starts when we rise 
To higher than physical spheres — appropriate 
To our own substance what each realm supplies. 
First thing to do in order to contemplate 
And understand life's fullness, in contrast 
With mere existence, is to amplify 
Our views of the realities so vast 
In which the pastures of our being lie. 



EXISTENCE AND LIFE. 69 

Truth is appropriated by the mind, 

Assimilated, as the body meal. 

Cohesion and attraction are inclined 

To intellect, as much as loadstone, steel. 

Who understands them, widens' his own zone ; 

Not so the man who makes prosaic deals 

In merchandise and land estates alone. 

And intellectual ardor never feels. 

One gets in vital union with them all, 

Another uses them mechanical. 

The man, also, that bread-making sees through. 

Deals with realities therein as true 

As he who mixes, stirs and kneads the dough; 

And derives substance bakers do not know. 

The man who the relations sees, well-fixed. 

Gold to geology, the age it was up-cast. 

How it was washed in stream-beds, with quartz mixed, 

How it is purified, and turned to coin at last — 

Has gold in plenty — by intellectual grip. 

He may not have in purse the lucre, real, — 

'Tis his by a more subtile ownership. 

The die of Truth has made it coin ideal. 

Thus every sense is duct of avenue 
Transmitting life-material to the mind; 
And to the body as well. Seal up the view, 
Strike the eye's panorama from mankind. 



70 EXISTENCE AND LIFE. 

The life would palsy, and the truth would swerve 
That courts the spirit through the optic nerve. 
Destroy the ear, and all the truths that ride 
On waves of sound, in music or debate. 
In talk or eloquence, no more abide — 
No more the inner nature penetrate. 

And beauty is as real as a flower. 
Exquisiteness of landscape is a thing 
Substantial as the land. The spirit's power 
Grows by such natural aspects, for they bring 
A sustenance as sure as labor's toil 
Evokes in streaming plenty from the soil. 

How many artists are by mountains fed ! 
The harvests which the faithful fields supply 
Soon to the cities and the seas are sped; 
But these men, In their vast capacity, 
Carry the rocky ridges, tendons, domes. 
In all their intellective haunts and homes; 
They wrap and wind their anaconda power 
Round natural citadels where mountains tower. 
Breathe in their mists, and eager, lap their shine, 
Drink from their morning dews aerial wine. 
They feel it all into their souls dissolve 
Like juices which the happy bees evolve — 



EXISTENCE AND LIFE. 



Then paint It on the canvas of the heart 
With all the spiritual honey of their art. 

Just where a person's deepest interests lie — 
Not in the space which he may occupy — 
There is his real life. The dwelling shows 
His outward place; his dreams his life disclose. 

Burritt, (Elihu) learned blacksmith, blows 
His bellows in Worcester — there his iron rings; 
But, looking in his mind, the vision shows 
Of fifty languages with feathery wings. 
Look at his spirit, vast with lore and love, 
Behold it, lightsome, flying like a dove. 
Emblem of purity that cannot cease — 
Faith's figure, also, with the olive-leaves of peace. 

If one in Ephesus had sought for Paul, 
He would have found him working on a sail. 
In a tent-maker's shop. The tent was all 
In tatters o'er his head — soon he must fail. 
But there were mystic breathings In the air. 
And melodies about, observers never caught; 
A subtler light than of the sun played there. 
About his needle, as he stitched and wrought 
On the Clllclan canvas In his hand, — 
" A light that never was on sea or land." 



Substance and Show." 



"^ubstanrf unh ^l^am" 



Written after a review of Thomas Starr King's most cele- 
brated Lecture with this title, delivered iu 1S51, when he was 
in his twenty-eighth year. 



If you will hold a paving-stone in your grip, 

Some written words, too, on a paper-slip, 

Observers will not hesitate to say 

The substance in the rock will far outweigh. 

But they might make a positive mistake, 

Discernment might not truly be awake. 

Suppose the slip of paper should contain 

The sentence, "God is love" — words few and plain; 

Or, "As thyself thy neighbor thou shalt love" — 

(Phrase specially ordained the heart to prove) 

Or, "Men have like moral rights in every age. 

Because of the same heavenly parentage" — 

The unsuspected paper, heavy grown, 

Then represents more substance than the stone. 

The earth may pass, nature in chaos sink. 

But words like these will never die or shrink. 

"Substance" "stands under" something, and sustains; 
The thing upheld is safe while it remains; 
Whatever, then, that doth create, uphold. 
Though it may never to the mind unfold. 



76 SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 

Though men may never handle It, or see, 

Is more substantnal than the thing Itself can be. 

And so the principle that takes control 

Of all our way, and work, and words — the soul — 

Holding the bodily frame at every move, 

Infusing all our action and our love. 

Its vitalizing current flowing fresh. 

Is more substantial than the bones and flesh. 

A ten-pound weight falling upon your head, 
As substance, has a dolorous effect; 
Not so a Bible leaf If dropped Instead, 
Say from the firmament, straight and direct. 
There Is a way, however. In which a page 
Of the New Testament may heavy fall. 
And split a nation In its holy rage. 
Or strength Infuse of an Egyptian wall. 

We're warned. If we would hold to solid ground. 
Substance Is not confined to things we see; 
Substance with matter we must not confound. 
The physical system leans on spirit free. 
Science steps In to speak this truth — It says: 
"The world of matter? Why, there can be none; 
Matter, wherever cast — In all Its ways. 
Was wed with spirit when Its course begun." 



SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 77 

So, everywhere about us, tossed or fixed, 
Matter and spirit infrangible are mixed. 
A world of matter, were there such, would be 
A heap of sand beside a sterile sea; 
Or infinite continent of stagnant fume. 
Wrapped In a mantle of perpetual gloom; 
No motion, force, no beauty, order, form, 
No cooling shade, sublimity of storm. 
No agitation, no pulsation free. 
Nothing In the universe as now we see. 

In what a swelling hymn Astronomy sings 
The real substance of Invisible things ! 
If what we see Is so o'erwhelming vast. 
What shall we think of forces unseen massed ? 
Vitalities upon whose ample breast 
And In whose arms all visible things find rest? 
No Atlas of Greek thought upholds the sphere. 
Yet constellations all are free from fear. 
An energy Impalpable supports them all, 
Insuring them ,and guarding them from fall; 
The same where'er their luminous flight may be. 
Using no muscles and no masonry. 

An ancient said, "Give me a foot of ground 
Outside the globe as it is onward whirled, 
A spot that I may stand on, safe and sound, 
And I will make my lever lift the world." 



78 SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 

A lever, all invisible, does lift 
Our globe and its blond lunar partner, too, 
And makes them waltz together, silent, swift. 
Twelve hundred miles a minute in the blue — 
True to the music of the sun in play 
Keeping majestic motion evermore, — 
And heaves the systems and the milky way 
In grand cotillons on its airy floor. 

Diamond, and ice, and crystal, all are due 
To military forces underground. 
Finding in caves and crypts employment true, 
Their fingers playing with an art profound; 
Drilling unceasing through the coldest night 
Companies of atoms into crystal squares. 
Flashing caprices changeable and bright, 
And "broad and general as the casing air." 

When to the vegetable world we turn 
The forms we see grow out of substance, too, 
But still more stirring are the facts we learn, 
More wonderful revelation breaks in view. 
All things belong here to a common stock.* 
But how they spring upon such diferent wings ! 
A lily is woven here, there grapevines interlock, 
A dahlia's beauty now, now honeysuckle swings. 



Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon. 



SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 



In Italy the orange, Egypt, palm, 
The bounteous ohve, gift of heaven. In Greece, 
In Maine the pine, Peru the tree of balm — 
A subtle force gives each Its heart of peace. 

The charming Grecian fancy holds no more — 
That In each tree a Dryad lived, to cheer. 
And died immediate the tree's reign was o'er; 
But now a truth more beautiful Is near; 
There Is Inhabiting each shrub and flower 
A bright life-spirit that shelters and defends 
Whene'er destruction's prowling forces lower, 
Silent accomplishing its certain ends. 

Look at the oak. Leviathan of the fields ! 
The senses and the scales would say, mayhap, 
The substance of the tree Is what It wellds 
In bulk of bark and bough, and leaves and sap. 
The cords of wood, and moisture, that comprise 
Its density and give it weight and size. 

Its substance does not lie, though, In its cloak, 
Its outward vestiture of leaves and bark, 
Or In its mass; its substance makes It oak, 
Sturdiest of trees In nature's spacious park. 



80 ' SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 

Its substance Is Its spring of life unseen, 
Colls the thick trunk within Its hardy hem, 
Wraps annual Its rings all sappy green, 
And weaves Its bark and glues It to the stem; 
And pushes out Its boughs, and clothes Its twigs 
With leaves digestive; from the soil digs 
Continual nourishment; makes the roots clench 
The ground with fibrous fingers 'gainst the storm ; 
Watching, that never overstrain or wrench 
Shall bring to ruin Its majestic form. 



Conception of endurance,, In the mind. 
Associated are with things we see, 
Mechanical Implements that loose and bind. 
So their divorce Is difficult to decree; 
And yet the streaming of electric fire 
That splits an ash Is nothing to be weighed; 
Loadstones that quick to real weights aspire, 
And makes them jump, — their springs are not sur- 
veyed. 
A man will have good molars when he gnaws 
A spike of Iron like a candy-stick, 
But hydrogen gas will take It In Its jaws. 
Swallow it greedily, and digest it quick. 



SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 81 

Our lesson, then, spoken by science to man, 

Is faith in the intangible unseen. 

That is the prominent fact in nature's plan, 

Matter the battle-ground of forces keen. 

All matter's particles, the chemists tell, 

Are strained up to endure in last degree; 

The glistening bead of dew from whose sweet well 

The daisy nourishes its infancy, 

And which a sunbeam sprinkles on the ground, 

Is globular compromise of powers that wage 

Unceasing strife; that would (so science has found) 

Shake a whole city In their unchained rage. 



And so each matter-atom is the slave 

Imperious masters never let alone; 

Caressed and nursed, then tossed upon the wave. 

Next into caverns or volcanoes thrown; 

The plaything of some strenuous overseer — 

Slapped, kicked and cuffed along its whole career. 



For every particle is forever bound 
By fealty eternal to some spiritual lords; 
One pinches It, another swings it round, 
Another holds it In his wiry cords. 



82 SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 

Now painted 'tis by this, blistered by that, 

By heat tormented, then soon chilled and cold, 

Hurled from Its sweat In the Equator's plat 

To where the Arctic's Icy arms enfold; 

Then, sudden as its panting currents freeze, 

Sent on far errand to the southern sea ; 

Through transmigrations forced — ilesh, fowl, and 

fish— 
If, in some corner of creation's bound. 
The poor thing, dying, meets its ultimate wish, 
Searched out and whipped to life again, and kept in 

constant round. 

Thus is the stuff we handle, weigh, and tread. 
Only the show of substances that lie — 
While closely to material objects wed — 
Beyond the reach of the material eye. 



If substance, true-defined. Is causal force. 

Ideas, as substances, occupy first place; 

For the whole universe was from sacred source. 

Thought into beauty, symmetry, and grace. 

The word was, "Let light be, and there was light." 

Nature is imagery of ideas divine. 

A row of types arranged by fingers tight 

May show not only to the eye and mind 



SUBSTANCE AND SHOW 



Shapes, colors, and all sensible qualities, 
But also Intimate some thought that rose 
In human Intellect and straightway flies 
To show to others Its own loves and woes. 

So natural obstacles all do constitute 

A hieroglyphic alphabet which states 

Great truths and sentiment that have their root 

In Intellect Infinite that ne'er abates. 

Each planet wheels Its circle round Its sun; 

Each sun pours blaze upon the starry blue ; 

Of all the constellated chandeliers not one 

But burns exalted with a purpose true; 

No firmament unfolds its robe of light 

With fringe celestial but does part express 

The mind of God In Its umvearled flight, 

And owes to it Its birth and loveliness. 



I'he principle applies to history and to man; 

All shows of social life do body forth — 

In the same marvelous, all-enfolding plan — 

Substance impalpable, their real worth. 

Churches and schoolrooms, w^orkshops, every home, 

Opinion represent. The eye sees true 

Brick, mortar, iron, wood, foundation, dome. 

But not the pregnant seeds from which they grew. 



84 SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 

The forces which uphold them are ideas, 
Affections, sentiments, conceptions, godly fears. 
Strike these from out a people's mind and heart, 
Its homes and temples, colleges and art 
Would fall away like trunk of sturdy oak 
When all its life-power feels the lightning-stroke. 

Each nationality throbbing on the earth 
Is a huge battery of spiritual force, 
To which each individual, from his birth. 
Contributes something from his own resource. 
Of two, the question of superior power 
Might rest upon their relative stubbornness, 
The moral energies which are their dower. 
And not upon the numbers they possess. 

France incarnates a certain temperament; 
Each generation steadfastly supplies 
Of the same social force its complement. 
Giving her one character through centuries. 
England hives passions of a different kind, 
And the thought, whether in a long-spun strife, 
England or France would awful ruin find. 
Ending the nation's un'ty of life. 
Raises the question whether the Celtic blood, 
Its bubbling impulses and martial zeal. 
Have higher spiritual qualities and mood 
Than the more slow and sullen forces feel — 



SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 85 

Than the rough, obstinate purpose that resists, 
The cautious resolution that persists, 
The Inner spirit that backs momentous fight, 
And welds an Anglo-Saxon army's might. 

In the campaigns of Wellington in Spain, 
The conduct of the strife at Waterloo, 
This was the real struggle, — a wrestle amain 
Of certain spiritual quahties that grew 
In antecedent time. The charge of Ney 
Under Napoleon's eye, was the gathering roll 
And swing of storm-waves, — all things must make 

way, 
That is, all objects moveable; but such control 
Could not reach Wellington at all, for he 
Was all immovable In his Immensity. 
The temper of his men who stood the shock 
As adamantine columns stand the rain. 
Blent with the leader's resource, was the Saxon rock 

On which those splendid Celtic surges swung in vain 

The beat of fiei7 sensibility was one, 
The other was a patience hard as stone. 

Battalion discipline Is of consequence 
Greater than numbers far, because It binds 
A spiritual force to that of muscles tense; 
Greater Is fervor stil], for fervor finds 



80 SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 

Still higher spiritual force. We wonder how 
The arms of Alexander could oppose 
Such multitudes; we should not wonder now; 
The things that make his history compose 
Enthusiasm, courage, spears plus brains. 
Forces in union — they achieved his gains. 

Bayonets are ne'er so terrible and keen, 

]n the stout grip of an advancing line, 

As when they're bayonets that think, that lean 

On God — as was our Revolution's sign ; 

No regiments so perilous with might 

As those which Cromwell led, when spiritual light 

Was drilled into the ranks with lasting stay. 

And bayonets could not only think, but pray. 

A nation or an army (thus In every case) — 

All that we see of It — Is only show; 

I'he substance of the Intricate whole we trace 

\o unseen sources of perennial flow: 

Ideas and passions, temper, genius, zeal. 

Are the sure heritage of the commonweal. 

A nation's power Is made up, in part. 
Of generations past, whose bodily forms, 
Leaving this drama of the mind and heart. 
Passed long ago to silence, dust, and worms. 



SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 87 

1/here Is a beautiful, Impressive law 

Of history, by which all genius past. 

All conquering sacrifice, all thoughts that draw, 

Into a nation's character are cast: 

"A beautiful mass of colors"* — to gratify 

And vein the moral frame with sensibility. 

Thus, haply, we may see 
If but our thought and Inner sight be free, 
The substance of- the past lives ever on 
When all Its forms material are gone. 
The real past Is vitally present, now; 
All that is visible of a nation dies, 

Its soul survives somehow; 
The truth which it discovered and held in prize. 

Forever is preserved ; 
Its essence, passed to civilization, lies 

Forevermore unswerved; 
Improves society in all its states and climes. 
And goes as common property to after times. 

There Is a civilization green In age. 
That lives on while the generations die; 
Laws, principles, and arts mankind engage, 
And form the structure of society. 



Such a beautiful mass of (to\ov^— Addison. 



88 SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 

Just as the surface of the globe is made 
Of various strata, such as clay and stone, 
Which geologic periods have laid, 
And whose united strength supports our own. 
The moral world is comprehended, too, 
In layers \rhich races have deposited. 
And which our souls subsist upon as new 
While Generations have successive lied. 



The best life of the nations that are gone 

Is still in civilization all our own; 

All the Old Testament's influence and power, 

Greek character and literature in flower. 

The heroism and the law of Rome, 

]n part are woven into every home; 

They're steadily poured into our moral li/e 

From churches, colleges, through centuries rife. 

Though Greek Republics, and the Hebrew State, 

And Roman Empire, fell, predestinate. 



From German savages in forests far. 
From feudal customs and from ancient war. 
From the Crusaders and their thrilling story, 
The Catholic Church in its ripe power and glory, 
The life of Socrates, Augustine's thought, 
All righteousness, all benefaction wrought; 



SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 



The mighty speech of Paul on Athens' hill; 

The thinking of John Hiiss, his resokite will; 

What Bacon wrote, andShakespear caught and bound; 

What Faust Invented, and what Newton found; 

All the great victories of heroes gone; 

Blood-sealed fidelity by martyrs shown; 

The stirring scenes and pictures history paints; 

Holy achievements of the world's true saints; — 

All pour upon the world their soulful sway, 

And beat within the heart of man to-day. 

Our character is our substance culminate; 

A man may be what he is pleased to be; 

Not circumstances make our real estate; 

Though nature pushes our activity. 

Creative forces, In ascending scale. 

With energies mechanical begun, 

Up through the will and powers that never fail — 

Through chemical affinities — continual run. 

Added to all that Washington has done. 
He will do more to help the land he freed ; 
One-half our area lost would shock and stun, 
But, fobbed of his great heart were vaster loss Indeed. 
His men, our fathers, took their faith and food 
From his majestic calm, and hopeful mood, 
And saw the nourishment of future ages rest 
In the resources of a single breast. 



90 SUBSTANCE AND SHOW. 

The Stuff of which a lofty soul Is made 

Is fabric that can never shrink or tear; 

Storms of experience cannot bend or ^ade, 

Nor death, with tooth of savage chemistry, impair. 

Men walk the streets, and seem about alike. 

Momentous differences rise not in show; 

Height, bulk, complexion, clothes — these strike 

As being distinctions, but it Is not so. 

A little hill that dominates the bound 

Will show the buildings by the zone enclosed; 

Disparities in cost and splendor found 

Of what the panorama is composed. 

So would its human habitants appear 

If we could stand upon some spiritual height. 

And the recilhies see, all full and clear. 

Which fleshly tenements hide from the light. 

We would the churches of the city see 

In inner life; and, higher but akin. 

With grace more intricate, more capacity, 

Cathedral spirits, pure without, within, 

Like Channing! — whose voices are sweet bells 

That call to worship, and whose thoughts, like spires, 

Are ever lifted up in fervid sw^ells. 

To talk with God and play on heavenly lyres. 



Deliverance from the Fear of Death. 



ifliuf ranr? frnm thf ilT?ar of ipatl| 



Written after a study of Thomas Starr King's Lecture-Sermon 
with this title, delivered in 1857. 



When into our own natures we look well — 

Mark all that our deliberations tell — 

In vast review we see it true and clear 

That Death's sure doom is our supremest fear. 

A set of principles, or such a tone 

Of feeling, as should make us all their own — 

Complete emancipating all our kind 

From this dread thrall of sentim.ent and mind, 

Would lift the spirit unrestrained and high, 

Into the freedom of the sea and sky. 

There is apparent end of all we know 
And all that knowledge ever can bestow. 
Nature, in all her beauty, wonder, light, 
For us, at least, is pre-ordained to blight; 
The cheer, the music, of this palpable world 
Will terminate as if in chaos hurled; 
All human fellowship will have an end. 
The ministries of love no more attend; 



94 DELIVERANCE FROM THE FEAR OF DEATH. 

A vast black curtain drop from heaven its roll 
Across the track of every human soul, 
Veiling, forever ending, thick and tense. 
The straining importunities of sense. 

Myriads have pilgrimed to the other side, 

And yet no single voice, or chorus wide, 

Calls back to say if life and love be there, 

As in our mortal world thrills everywhere. 

No waves of influence come with welcome sway 

To break suspense or clear our doubt away; 

No answer to the cry for spiritual rest; 

Terrors and quakings haunt the human breast; 

Suspicion of the woes that may await 

After the soul has passed that drop-scene gate. 

These thoughts revolved, must we not hold it true 
A man's religious faith is like his view — 
His view of death- that from conception swells 
The efflorescence' of his principles? 

There are some living souls of tranquil mien. 

And fearing naught that lies behind the screen, 

The strugglings through it of intenser light 

Are fixed in their illuminated sight. 

They feel that all their privileges here. 

All things that make our native earth so dear, 



DELIVERA^^CE FEO^L THE FEAR OF DEATH. 95 

The largess that undying natures crave, 
Are olTered in the rest beyond the grave. 
They see no shadow cast upon their work; 
In all their paths no apparitions lurk; 
No darkened homes or hearts, no quickened breath, 
Nothing that palls or withers when they muse on 
death. 

Such spirits win the greatest triumphs here : 
Calmness and trust, deliverance from fear. 

Experience and science both attest 

That forms of dread upon delusions rest. 

In regions of the highest truth is found 

Prepared provision against every ground; 

Those that are well do suffer vastly more 

From thought of death than those who are passing 

o'er. 
When this full hour comes, there is no strife. 
Small dread of giving up the bodily life. 
Those that till latest breath their terrors keep 
Are less than unstrung brains that cannot sleep. 
Death is appointed, and as natural quite 
As yielding up our consciousness at night; 
The Infinite goodness, pressing ever near, 

Takes each constituent element of fear 

That this is true, and so shall ever be. 
Eternal love now calls us all to see: 



96 DELIVERANCE FROM THE FEAR OF DEATH. 

Of all the full and far-unfolding fields 
By science searched so long, none haply yields 
More than this proof of a beneficent reign — 
The distribution and economy of pain. 
The principle now is universal met, 
That when pain can no longer be firm-set 
As monitor to guard, and warn, and teach. 
Or, nearer friend, to serve, appeal, beseech; 
When passes the occasion of its stay. 
Its hands unclasp, and it is taken away. 

And so, accordant with this truth, we find 
The dread of dying melting from the mind 
When it no longer holds an office true, 
Or when the vital power is smitten through. 
When it sure feels that life must ebb away. 
The will no more recoils, it would not stay; 
Calls in its wandering, and its wondering powers, 
And the affections all are calm in final hours. 

In contemplation of life's ultimate drain. 
There is an over-estimate of pain. 
"Last mortal agony!" Words of pathetic reach, 
Should have no place in all our human speech. 
Such is wise testimony. Life breathes out 
Without a sense of suffering or doubt; 
The Angel hovers over as a friend. 
The trustful words of David fit the end. 



DELIVERANCE FROM THE FEAR OF DEATH. 97 

Our real deliverance from the bond of fear — 
(The sweetest freedom that is possible here) — 
Must be wrought out while we enjoy the wealth 
Abounding in the boon of bodily health. 
'Tis hard to say, when final seconds wait, 
What is the heart's inmost religious state; 
But let the active life the best fulfill 
Of righteous thoughts and consecrated will. 
It lies in comprehension by the mind 
Of all the terrors, all the doubts that bind, 
Dispersing them by principles that hold 
With a conviction clear and spirit-bold; 
Which, paralleling life's unbroken length, 
'^Grows with our growth and strengthens with our 
strength." 

The senses are the foe, and strain their part 
Against the happiest doctrine of the heart. 

We must oppose them, and our feelings bring 
To see the soul as the substantial thing. 
The body is the soul's, a feeble frame, 
And soon must char around the living flame. 
In this perception we must strenuous stand : 
The moral forces in us hold command. 

Experience which tests, which educates, 
Deepens our moral and our spiritual states. 



98 DELIVERANCE FROM THE FEAR OF DEATH. 

Is the most priceless which men ever get, 
Our best possession and our largest debt. 
Poverty and hardship noble blessings prove 
When they incite a man to deeds of love; 
They purify the heart, correct the will — 
Their purpose ever and their purpose still. 

A deep and wise religious culture proves 
Its crowning blessedness and power to close 
The bondage of a fear within the soul 
That else through every life holds fast control. 
We must protect ourselves, and not employ 
Our powers in any line of sensuous joy, 
In scale of living or in worldly place, 
But doing duty clothed with inward grace. 
When we have felt, where'er our feet have trod. 
The impulse of acquaintanceship with God, 
Lifted above all mental doubt or strife, 
Read all the publications of His life 
By our own faculties — then we shall be 
In frame to know that immortality 
Related to our souls, is natural truth. 
And, lying just beyond, is sempiternal youth. 
So, each shall see that, when the body falls, 
'Twas but the scaffolding around our nature's outer 
walls. 



YOSEMITE. 



L*fa 



fosftnttp 



Wriitten after reflections on Thomas Starr King's "Lecture- 
Sermon on a Visit to the Yosemite Valley," aelivered in San 
Francisco, July 29, 1860. 



Leaving the sheltering forest's quiet mood 
Almost without premonishment, we stood 
On the lit summit of the southern wall. 
Soft murmuring, an arching waterfall 
A thousand feet beneath us, leaped away 
As far again before its widening spray 
Shattered itself in finer mists, and fell 
On the pure bosom of a rocky dell. 

This vasty trench, cloven by Omnipotence, 
Yawning profound, and challenging the sense, — 
From the wall opposite, a mile away, 
A brook was pouring down in foamy play; 
Although 'twas slipping fast so far and deep. 
It yet appeared of its own will to creep; 
Its current widening like a bow of glass. 
Threading the curved green meadow's lap of grass, 
Which nestled happy neath its limpid falls. 
Under the shades of the Egyptian walls. 



102 YOSEMITE. 

Off from the northernmost cliff, retreating bare, 

Arose a wedge-Hke summit in the air. 

Ashy in hue, above a field of snow 

Which could not fasten to its polished brow, 

But piled around its base and melted back 

To feed the music of a cataract. 

There was not one among us felt or spoke, 
When that surprising vision on us broke. 
That he was looking on a natural freak. 
Or patch of chaos purposeless and bleak; 
But sensible something vaster had been shown 
Than matter — that clearer beam was thrown 
From Supreme Majesty; like the account 
When Infinite glory swathed the holy mount. 

Ten years ago the white man had not gazed 
Upon the cliffs on which we looked amazed; 
Yet 'tis from thousand centuries they stand 
Fashioned and draped by the Almighty hand. 
When Adam first surveyed the virgin earth. 
They stood in an invulnerable birth; 
Ages before ancestral man waxed strong, 
Processes were at work those rocks among. 
Stirring the soil, touching the verdure's gleam. 
Channeling the winding-paths beneath the stream, 
That nature's tints and qualities might meet. 
And the grand picture which we saw, complete. 



YOSEMITE. 103 

If you can see an Infinite purpose, if 

Divine relation to a mighty cliff, 

Or verdant landscape lying in surprise, — 

Then you see true, and see with heaven-lit eyes ; 

For- God reneivs and gives to all he wrc tight 

Immediate action of his conscious thought. 

All the great landscapes round the globe entwined, 

Are real pictures by the Infinite Mind. 

One of his pencils is each natural force; 

Varieties of substance in their course 

Are all his colors. Every nice effect 

Of grace or majesty we can detect, 

Cost, through ten thousand years of action whirled. 

All the resources of the natural world. 

If for a trice in all the stretch of time 

His care and thought had wandered since the prime 

Of nature, they had not grown merely less, 

But dropped into the vault of nothingness. 

A man may ride close to a crag whose lift. 
As he holds back his head to look so high! 
Three times a thousand feet without a rift, 
Springing all sheer and naked to his eye. 
In spray of waterfall may stand and see 
(So farther yet on high the line is run!) 
Edge of a mountain-w^all that seems to be 
The limpid water's shelter from the sun. 



104 YOSEMITE. 

He may behold a tower (looking still higher), 
Its broken edges softened by the rise, 
In likeness of an incompleted spire 
Of gothic minster, straight above his eyes. 
At evening, when the sun, retreating warm, 
Touches no other of the valley's charm. 
A vast globe of bald rock, a mile uprolled. 
Glows in the brightness of the sunset gold.* 

Or one may lie, at noon, beneath a tree. 
Close to the basis of a valley wall. 
And his eye, wandering up, at ease, will see 
A great, stern presence, lordliest of all; 
Stirring the wonder and the thought of man — 
Magnificent battlement, "El Capitan" ! 

On its vast stature not a crevice shows 
Where man from a balloon might drop a plant 
Or caroling bird a seed; no life it knows. 
Not even the lizard's scale, or wandering ant. 
There Is no line of strata — not a mark 
For leisure eyes In its uncurving length — 
One piece of granite, savage, solid, stark; 
Sprung up to guard in Its eternal strength, 
The beauty-robes of its Immediate scene: 
The flowing river and the lap of green. 



The ''South Dome." 



YO SEMITE. 105 

The bear and deer, with keener sight than man, 

Have drunk from those calm pools since their first plan 

And looked up to the crowns of those proud crests 

Without emotion In their free-born breasts. 

Only man's senses can appreciate 

The majesty that clothes material state. 

It Is because they're linked with moral powers 

And spiritual agencies forever ours. 

The senses are the tubes and lenses which 

The mind and soul employ to pitch 

Their vision over all the outward world — 

Immortal faculties with sails unfurled. 

If they discern what beasts cannot detect, 

Their reaches all so wide and high reflect. 

Their objects so diversified and grand, 

What must the Soul be, In supreme command I 

What Is this Inward emperor, who brings 

The vassal senses to attend as Kings? 

Win we revere the senses, and not more reverent be 

Of the Imperial spirit which gives them dignity? 



The thirsty lowlands, fed by snow-born streams, 
Which leap to them from out their rocky place 
See never-failing bounty and the gleams 
Of Infinite beneficence and grace 



106 YOSEMITE. 

Bending from high, over the yawning rent, 
Suppose a man could gather to his mind 
The earthquake forces on those ramiparts spent, 
The powers cohesive that compact and bind; 
The nature troops that tore those cliffs apart. 
Clearing a channel for the river's flow — 
Delightful picture to the mind and heart, 
Gliding reposeful in the deeps below I — ■ 
What words could Science give him that would tell 
The overflowing rapture of the view 
Like Bible passages of fervid swell. 
Poetic ever and forever true ? + + 

How desolate is human life, my friend. 
Whatever earthly good you may possess. 
If grand religions scenery does not send 
Into your heart its jubilant joyousness ! 
We followed to a cataract's very base. 
And stood amid the tremulous rainbow spray, 
\Vhich, swinging like a pendulum of lace. 
Dazzled the senses with Its misty sway — 



■j-f "Jehovah stood and measured the earth; and the everlasting 
mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his 
ways are everlasting. I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction; 
and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble . . . 
Tliou didst cleave the earth with rivers. The mountains saw 
thee and they trembled; the overliowing of the water passed 
by." 



YOSEMITE. 107 

As If a fairy landscape did unfold 

Its airy wonders to the startled sight. 

But not in secular language can be told 

That panorama lying soft and bright; 

It is the prophet's words the flaming spray 

Chants tuneful through uninterrupted play;* 

And the Psalm rises, strung with spiritual power, 

To urge the lesson of this glorious hour.+ 

So many of us there are who have no part 

In spiritual beauty of the inner life; 

No glowing, quick'ning landscapes of the heart, 

•But live upon the flats in prosy strife. 

In doubt and drought who never look aloft 

In hope, or sense of Infinite guard and care, 

Whence shadow falls, and streams flow singing soft; 

Who do not see though God is everywhere ! 

Friend ( in the tide of the remaining years 
Bestir your heart with sacred, cleansing fears; 
Whatever else may lie beyond control 
You still may have Yosemite in your soul. 



*"How great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! '' 
+ "Ont of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. '" 



V^ 



Sight and Insight, 



Written in the light of Mr. King's remarkable lecture with this 
title— date not accessible— and which is second only to "Sub- 
stance and Show" in majesty of thought and language. 



Vision is the most glorious privilege 

at our command; 
Our royal endowment among the senses 

is the eye; 
Physically, insignificant specks, 

on the earth's face we stand, 
But th' exquisite eye brings outer loveliness 

in limitless supply. 
V¥e stand on less than a square foot of soil. 
But visions round the far horizon roam, 
We look up from our pleasures or our toil, 
To find the zenith only roofs our home. 
The eyes of animals are instruments 
Of instinct, which greed subjects to control; 
The eyes of man an organ full of sense. 
Serving as windows of the mind and soul. 

There is a doctrine that our knowledge comes 
All through the senses, chiefly by the eye; 
But 'tis not so; the senses yield no crums 
Of knowledge ; impressions they supply, 



112 SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 

Never Ideas. They seem to furnish all, 
But are reporters simply to our call. 

The eagle has a stronger eye than man. 
But show It the Apollo Belvldere; 
It only sees unmeaning stone, It can 
Experience nothing; It has no idea. 
Also, the stag has better ear than man. 
But at an orchestra It will not swerve; 
It hears a mob of tones, which cannot fan 
A flame within. The human nerve 
Disposes such glad music Instantly 
Into sonatas or a symphony. 

Put a moss-rose to nostrils of a hound. 

And see If It will waken, through his scent, 

Any emotion; or If there Is found 

Any betrayal of a sentiment. 

The senses of an animal report 

All that the senses, of themselves, can hold; 

But the dumb creatures. In their rest or sport, 

Have not the faculty to arrange, unfold; 

And so, to our perception ,!t appears, 

They see not, having eyes, and hear not, having ears. 



SIGHT AND INSIGHT. Il3 

All knowledge Is of Insight the result, 
And education Is a process of Insight. 
The Infant, who has no one to consult, 
Thinks everything lies on Its own eye aright. 
The chamber's furniture and the parent's face, 
Toys, animals, trees, and even the wondrous sky, 
In confused mass, all He In Its embrace, 
Part of the tiny stranger's personality. 
With gradual wisdom, slow, the little elf 
Pushes the heavy world off from Itself, 
And comes to look at things with truer eyes, 
Attributing to them place, distance, size. 
It comes to be a Herschel by and by, 
The globe Is pedestal of Its Imperial eye; 
Measures the distance of the Pleiades, 
Searches the heavens even farther off than these; 
Scans great Orion In majestic place. 
Sculptured In light on the black walls of space, 
In armor clad In his celestial runs. 
With his star-hllted dagger and his club of knotted 
suns. 

How narrow was the universe, contrasted with our 

light, 
On which the old Greek gazed through shadows of 

his night! 



114 SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 

Or David, when looking, with no outward aid, 

"The firmament showeth his handiwork", he said! 

The orbs they saw as dots of creamy hght, 

Science has made expand, In mortal sight. 

And seen them swell Into majestic globes, 

That waltz through all Immensity In rainbow robes. 



Science has spaced them millions of miles between, 
Each cutting Its round within the other's track; 
Has caught the plane on which they play and lean. 
Swinging eternal without stay or slack; 
Measured the mountains there; discovered snows 
That whiten the poles and melt In summer-time; 
How fast they spin and how their climes dispose; 
Pictured the contrast 'twixt their age and prime; 
Weighed all their mass and told how many tons 
Include those Httle dots (those mighty suns!) 

Tt has leaped upon the parent orb, and torn 

WIde-ope the blazing vesture of the sun 

Which he, through unimaginable time, had worn. 

And his stupendous ribs looked In upon; 

Its ever-lengthening measuring line has wound 

His bleak, black substance and his fire-wrapped face; 

Its feet have broke Into his blazing path and bound. 

With moral daring that would check his awful pace. 



SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 115 

Yet all unsatisfied, Its piercing gaze 

Has broke the spangled roofing of the night 

Into a measureless and archy blaze 

In which our solar system Is a mite. 

And, after years of trial, it has led 

The tremulous orb to serve; on which to lean 

Its airy ladder of light and spider-thread; 

And then has mounted on It all unseen, 

Into the gallery of the firmament — 

To find that even there its probe would not relent. 



In science every grandeur of result 

Has been made possible by the ardent acts 

Of nature's students, who reverently consult 

The delicate hints of insignificant facts — 

Facts all observe but students truly grasp 

And squeeze till truths are loosened from their clasp. 



An index is in every object known. 

They point a hundred ways, and always right; 

A path leads out from every stick and stone 

To statics, chemistry, dynamics, light; 

To gravitation, heat, electric shock, 

To the light sky and to the heavy clod. 

To all the substances In earth and rock, 

And the whole circle of the published lore of God. 



11(3 SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 

What is it that you call a pebble's weight? 

It is earth's pull upon it in your hand. 

Why does the earth pull at it so, like fate ? 

'Tis force of gravitation gives command. 

Were the earth's average substance not more dense 

Than that beneath our feet, it would not pull so tense. 

That ounce or two of weight, then, serves to show 

The globe is heavier as we sink below — 

That it is weightier, as a whole ('tis true!) 

Than if it were all granite through and through. 

Why is the pebble solid, in your hand? 

Was it not, once, only a mass of sand? 

"Force of cohesion," is your sure reply. 

Rut, if you pulverize it, it will stay so. Why? 

Why will it not become a solid again? 

Why will not all your pressure now constrain 

'J'o make it tight, coherent, as before? 

Answer that question, and I'll ask no more. 

Break the pebble open, and you will find 

A sparkling crystal — so long there confined. 

Explain that, please. The stone not only now coheres. 

But a new force, of crystallation, appears. 

7'ell how those particles were into order brought, 

With points and angles regularly wrought 

As mathematicians's diagram. Pray, tell me how: 

The pebble has become quite serious now. 



SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 117 

Melt It, you make a liquid. Raise the heat, 

It is reduced to gases — two or three. 

'Tv/as only gases, knotted, clinched, complete; 

How did they mingle, so as slone to be? 

In matter of thousand forms, gases the same 

Play in a limpid fervor or In flame. 

The mystery that In blended atoms lies, 

That will not open to the chemist's eves. 

A secret that the finite mind must own 

Its impotence to unlock, — starts out of stone. 



Again, the pebble we are handling now 
Is of a different kind from those around; 
Came from another stratum. Tell me how 
It came in exile to Its present ground. 
How did it reach the surface of the earth 
When loosened from Its own thick stratum's birth? 
Geology must explain, whose central fires 
Convulsive threw aloft the mountain spires. 
Our pebble gives another science room. 
To read its genesis and foretell Its doom. 

The scratches on this pebble icebergs caused, 
Grinding It o'er half the globe before they paused. 
Here water-hnes, which tell that it has lain 
Through centuries beneath th' unresting main; 



118 SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 

And lire-stains, that discourse of earthquake shocks, 

The shattering of castellated rocks. 

Of mountains split, and of the lava-rain 

Heaved by volconoes on the fertile plain. 

These forces, in a system must united be, 

If you would comprerend the pebble, and actually see. 

Rut, crack the pebble now, now you will find 

A marvel that will agitate the mind: 

A little fossil of creatures of the sea, 

Whose tribe, in far-back ages, ceased to be. 

Just how it sunk there we may never know, 

But the pebble was fluid then — sure, that was long 



Some persons dream that were they carried away 
From their environment familiar here. 
To where the other planets interplay ; 
Endowed with sight more keen, and sharp and clear, 
And closer view the wonders of the skies, 
Systems, and suns, and all their harmonies. 
They would have evidence of the Infinite One, 
Denied them since their mundane life begun. 
This would not help: such revelry of sight; 
Insight they need, aye, that would bring delight. 



.SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 119 

'TIs not In scale the Infinite contracts — 
Not even in expanse of the starry dome; 
But in the wisdom manifest in facts 
Is found his spacious and his gracious home. 
The Infinite Wisdom In a daisy Is expressed. 
Who looks beyond that life and growth, I vow, 
For a more startling and stupendous test 
Of God's existence, is an atheist now. 
Nature from Intellect he has Impelled, 
And never again will sight or logic weld. 
If, without God, a daisy can live on. 
So can a firmament stand, as firm as stone. 
The process true Is not to try and wring out 
An Infinite Mind by twisting nebulae. 
But to look humbly, gladly, all throughout, 
Into each fact of nature, and there see. 
Reflected Him, as in a mirror's face: 
Source of all science, holiness, and grace. 

Primal distinction in the eyes Is : Som.e 

See facts, while others see for what they stand; 

As ears are keen or deaf, tongues free or dumb. 

Some eyes are blind, some cross, and some command. 

And these degrees measure all difference 

Between true knowledge and crass Ignorance. 



120 SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 

in the domain of Beauty 'tis the same. 
Beauty, none of the senses can discern. 
Neither home creatures nor the hunted game, 
In quiet or in gambol, ever turn 
To view a meadow's peace, a river's curve; 
The grandeur even of mountains does not swerve. 
They cannot know emotion's sweet alarm — 
They see the facts but do not feel, the charm. 

Pity the man on whom all bloom is waste ; 
Possesses not an intellectual taste; 
Brushes the halo from pure nature's brow; 
To natural truth will not in spirit bow : 
Who disenchants the light, and carries eyes 
That shave the twinkle from the starry skies. 
Around the American mind the vice Is wound 
Of viewing nature as mechanical — 
As if It were by human cunning bound. 
And earth and sun, the solar system all. 
Were run by clock, and all the radiant stars 
Were whirled by drums and belts, and bands and 
bars. 

A man would lose unspeakably, if he. 
Possessing beauty-lore in fine degree. 
Should let it go beyond his stout command 
For legal title to all New England land. 



SIGHT AND INSIGHT. . 121 

His shriveled soul perpetual would forego 
The birthright of sure dividends of joy, 
An inner flower of infinite art, for show, 
Which could not help his soul, which he could not 
employ. 

The oak is instituted air and rain ; 

It draws scarce anything from the rich earth. 

Look high and far ! See every mountain-chain 

From rolling wind and gases had its birth. 

A single element of moisture pours 

In subtile juices through the veins of trees; 

In peach and apple, pear and plum, conjures 

All out of dew, as out of flowers the bees. 

'Tis from the foam of the tumultuous sea 
All verdure that clothes nature, issues free. 
If, every spring, it should miraculous rise 
From the salt deeps — if all it might comprise — 
If all the trees, all fruits, and all the grain, 
Should leap at once above the briny main. 
And wafted be by magic's unseen hand 
To line the rivers and adorn the land — 
The whole would only sensuous portray 
A scientific fact. The sunbeams play 
Coaxes the vapor from the seas away; 
The winds impel them o'er the thirsty land. 



122 SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 

Impartial blessing- slope and plain and strand; 
They drop in dew, or pour relieving showers 
Pure promise of the harvest and the flowers; 
They robe e'en rocks with green, and spread the face 
Of nature with all loveliness and grace. 



If we could find, in all our worldly sphere, 

A person who should knozv a single man, 

A person he would be who comes as near 

To knowing everything as finite creature can. 

Man stands at the apex of the pyramid; 

All natural fatness, juices, flavors hid. 

Converge forever, and forever fresh. 

To enrich his blood and to renew his flesh. 

They incarnate themselves : the light and heat, 

Chemical affinities, do all repeat 

The mystery of their breadth and length, 

And circulate around him to refresh his strength. 

Our spirits step into our bodies, to ride; 
And wield the harnessed forces which we stride. 
Out of three roots the tree of nature grows — 
Truth, Beauty, Good. Far up its mighty stem. 
With measuring rod, the man of science goes; 
And sees its silver-swaying branches gem 



SIGHT AND INSIGHT. 123 

The firmament. The poet's soulful sight 
Rests on Its symmetry, its arch of grace, 
Its flush of fruit, and all the flame of light 
That burns around it in its "pride of place." 
Only to him with finer eye than both. 
Unveils the secret how It feeds and thrives; 
He sees all clear the glory of Its growth. 
And the perennial springs from which It lives. 
The burning bush the solemn prophet sav/ 
Was miniature of nature, love-Illumed; 
Aglow with spirit by eternal law — 
Always aflame — forever unconsumed. 



MAY 9 1905 



